


Took A Break: An Alternate Hamilton History

by PsyBomb



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Hamilton - Miranda (Broadway Cast) RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25669606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsyBomb/pseuds/PsyBomb
Summary: Arising from a challenge: "Can you make Alexander take a break, going upstate with Eliza and Angelica in the second act, but keep as much of the rest of the play intact as possible?" A short one-shot resulted, and I am proud of how it came out.Some relationships change, some stay the same, sometimes a mere word or two is all the difference it takes.
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/Angelica Schuyler/Elizabeth "Eliza" Schuyler
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	Took A Break: An Alternate Hamilton History

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction, and is based on the play Hamilton as opposed to real life events. Ideas of how time works here are drawn from so many science-fiction books I’ve read over the years that I couldn’t begin to recount them all. I own none of the original works.

There was a murmur in the classroom. It wasn’t a large class, even in the year 3055 time travel wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to get into. Perhaps a dozen of them all told, mostly in casual wear, sitting at desks awaiting the instructor.

She walked in. The murmurs ceased. An older lady, easily in her late sixties, in simple pants and a collared shirt. Her gray hair was tied back, her brown eyes looking large behind wire spectacles. “Welcome to Temporal Physics, section 304. If this is not what you are here for, you definitely don’t want to stay more than another thirty seconds. Now, you may all be wondering why you had to take humanities and arts in addition to history coursework before coming here. Any guesses why?”

There were no hands. Everyone there had been wondering the same thing. She, having taught this class ten times before, knew this well, and did not expect any.

“What we do here looks at the very basis of cause and effect. Before we do anything, anything at all, we must exhaustively look at the second, third, and fourth order effects. Time itself does not unwind, as the theorists of old once thought it might, but in digging a new path for the river of time to travel you may have results you did not anticipate.

“Please open your tablets to the first files on the list. All of you should have studied the first play there, a historical musical popular in the early 2000s about the life of Alexander Hamilton. The second file there needs to be open at the same time. It is the same file… but with a few significant differences. Take a moment to look it over, particularly the second half.”

A hand rose. She acknowledged it. “Professor, I am a Hamilton fan even without the studies and I know this backwards and forwards, but I notice that my favorite song in it has some concerning changes.”

The professor grinned. There was always one, many came to this class because they wanted to witness or alter events they had heard of. “The person who recovered the second file felt much the same way you did. He was part of the earliest time travel experiments seventy years ago, and he felt that many of Alexander Hamilton’s visions for the future would have been better realized had he never suffered his humiliation, and thus died in a duel. He made one change, an innocuous one. He slipped Hamilton a drug that helped exacerbate the symptoms of overwork early in the summer of 1791. He then traveled forward to the year 2017, and bought copies of the musical and lyric books to gain a quick summary of exactly what came of the attempt. This is the second file.”

\---

Eliza: “Angelica, tell this man he’ll die if he keeps pushing at this pace!”

Alexander: “Angelica, tell my wife that if I don’t then I will be dead anyway.”

Angelica: “I know my sister like I know my own mind, you will never find anyone as trusting or as kind. My sister loves you more than anything in this life, you would cost her happiness and her mind! Please put your pride aside. If you fall, your plan will die. You will never be satisfied. We will never be satisfied!”

Alexander: “I can’t stop until I get my plan through Congress, but I must rest or I won’t get my plan through Congress. I will join you upstate.”

\---

Another hand rose. “Professor, the first song’s final lines are identical. Burr still shot him. The play still ends the same way. Did the attempt fail?”

“It’s not quite that simple. Time itself is plastic in nature, it is traveling along a set course. Changes to this course are going to be temporary deviations at best before it returns roughly to where it was going before. In particular, large events which have large effects tend to be more set, harder or impossible to dislodge. Although Alexander goes upstate on a visit to his father-in-law, and as a result never meets Maria Reynolds, other events transpired.”

\---

Burr: “There’s nothing like summer in the city, but Alex went upstate with two ladies looking pretty. There’s trouble in the air, you can smell it, but Alexander’s at the center of it all, I’ll let him tell it.”

Alex: “The pressure came up off my shoulders, I finally got a break. You never saw a bastard orphan happier to go upstate. Right arm around Angelica, left around my wife, the children playing happily it was a peaceful life, then she said,”

Angelica: “I know, you’re a man of honor…”

\---

“Whaaaaa…?”

“Exactly. Alexander never got blackmailed by James Reynolds, but his besetting sins still won out. His emotional relationship with Angelica turned into a very physical one. She ended up giving birth to a son with very distinctive cornflower blue eyes about eight months later, but given that the doctors of the area were not familiar with her husband they didn’t make the connection that he was Alexander’s. While there, he composed a letter to Thomas Jefferson asking to meet and discuss possibilities. You will note that the song that follows, The Room Where it Happens, is largely identical. Same through _most _of Washington On Your Side”__

____

____

\---

Jefferson/Madison/Burr: “Let’s follow the Tomcat and see where he goes,”  
Ensemble: Oh!  
Jefferson/Madison/Burr: “Because every second the Treasury grows,”  
Ensemble: Oh!  
Jefferson/Madison/Burr: “Just look at the women and see where they lead, get in the weeds, look for the seeds of Hamilton’s misdeed.”

\---

“Now that his enemies thought to look, they rapidly realized that SOMETHING unusual happened Upstate. Looking at the letter he sent Jefferson, it is not difficult to see when compared to his other texts. It was much more brief and direct, his time otherwise occupied.”

A different hand, a younger woman. “Even if they thought to investigate, how would they even know? Angelica Church had returned to England long before these events, and it’s not like they had cameras to go off of. Even the infamously lurid letters he exchanged with Angelica weren’t public yet, not until long after their deaths.”

“You are nearly correct,” the Professor responded. “Again remember the second and third order effects. In this case, the child Angelica had during her visit to America. Originally, she had managed to convince everyone that he resulted from relations with her husband immediately before coming, but once they thought to look he had several extremely distinctive features that were easy to identify even in correspondence, since many in London knew Angelica. It wasn’t long before the three confronted Hamilton, attempting to blackmail him with the scandal to keep him quiet instead of jailing him for speculation.”

\---

Hamilton: “This is the eye of the hurricane, this is the only way I can ensure my pen is free!”  
Ensemble “Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, WAIT…”  
Hamilton: “The Schulyer Pamphlet.”

\---

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.”

\---

Jefferson/Madison: “Have you read this?”  
Burr/Jefferson/Madison: “Alexander Hamilton had a torrid affair, and he wrote it down right there,”  
Madison: “Highlights!”  
Hamilton: “The charge against me is a connection with Angelica Church, betraying my wife, her sister. In truth, this was no betrayal, as it went on for a considerable time, with my wife’s knowing consent and participation.”  
Burr/Jefferson/Madison: “Damn!”

\---

“Professor, let me get this straight. Hamilton knew he was being blackmailed for a potentially massive scandal featuring a three-way with his wife and sister-in-law, and his solution to this was to publish a 50-page pamphlet detailing it?”

“He wrote the Reynolds Pamphlet in the prime timeline. Caution and temperance were not precisely his strong points.”

The student nodded. There was really nothing to say in response to this.

“The rest of the play proceeds in a manner very close to the original history. The same lives get ruined with the addition of Angelica, whose husband divorced her and sent her back to America after his suspicions were confirmed. You can see this by the song Congratulations, which was reinserted and made rather more vehement. Eliza still sings Burn, since her husband rather obviously did not consult her before making this public. George Eacker still says his disparaging remarks, Philip Hamilton still challenges him to a duel, and the duel still happens the same way. The timeline now reseated, Alexander still gets into his infamous duel with Aaron Burr, and his life ends with the exact same bullet as detailed. The echo effect from the change was minimal, but judged detrimental overall, and so the original traveler stopped himself from making the change and returned the timeline to its original state. This concludes your first lecture. Tomorrow, we will start getting technical.”


End file.
